DAKOTA — The Dakota Fire Protection District Board will wait until a state investigation is finished before taking any potential corrective action regarding its private ambulance service.

The board met Wednesday to discuss Tri-District Ambulance Service’s delayed April 6 response to the home of a 24-year-old farmer and road commissioner who was not breathing.

Board President Dave Parrish said the Illinois Department of Public Health is investigating the emergency medical response, which took an ambulance 22 minutes to reach Joshua Langholf’s farm at 5386 N. Dakota Road, even though it is just 5 miles from Tri-District’s Rock City location.

Langholf is believed to have died of a heart ailment. It’s not clear whether Langholf would have lived had the ambulance responded more quickly.

Star Ambulance, which staffs the Tri-District location in neighboring Rock City, provided its own explanation during a public meeting earlier this week.

Owner Tom Kempel emphasized that dispatchers never provided a town in their initial call with Langholf’s address. There are two stretches of North Dakota Road — one in Rock City and the other in Dakota.

The portable Garmin GPS specifically used for the ambulance was not receiving a signal. Relying on their cellphones’ GPS abilities, they first went to the wrong address and hadn’t read a map carefully before leaving. Complicating matters, Dakota firefighters were on a separate radio channel than Tri-District.